Three Simple Practice Tips(That make a HUGE impact)

1.) Work on small sections of music for longer amounts of time.

Too often when musicians go to practice they try to conquer more than they can handle. I've heard it all too often from many of my students. I ask them how they have practiced their piece over the past week and inevitably they tell me “I started at the beginning, played through until the end, and did this a couple times a day.” Of course the student has the best intentions when practicing in this manner. Sadly, however, they will be unaware of much time they are wasting. I wish I knew this when I was younger! Its 'okay' to practice the piece this way once or twice at the beginning or end of a 30-60 minute practice session, however this should not be the bulk of practice time. Why is this bad? The first reason is because they do not advance the technique needed to play each smaller musical idea with the correct speed, fluency, memory, or touch. It is worthy to note that the greatest pianists like Richter have confessed they would practice 4 to 8 measures for hours on end! Secondly, the student's mind and hands have no time to truly LEARN and ABSORB the material they are confronted with.

Practicing a small section of music (4 measures or less) 10+ times in a row will allow the student to absorb the specific passage into his or her muscle memory. After such repetitions the student will, most likely, have the passage memorized which is an obvious advantage to the student. Once a section of music is memorized the student is more free to explore physically and musically things like tempo, gesture, dynamics, and articulation as well as focus their attention on what their hands are doing to achieve a specific artistic result. This exploration would not have been possible if the student was stuck translating ink on a page to notes on a piano. They have to get past this and that is exactly what working on smaller sections of music for a longer amount of time will allow them to do.

2.) Visualize the music without even being at your instrument

Visualization whether aurally or visually is the unseen world of piano practicing. It what is going on behind the scenes of the musical mind. It is also completely intertwined with the previous practice tip as well because it relies directly upon our short term and long term memory. It is well know that adults can only hold around 7 items in their short-term memory. For exactly this reason students should be practicing around 4 – 6 measures of music for a 10 minute drill (hopefully within a larger 30-60 minute practice session in which we practice other short sections). It is much easier for a student to commit 4-6 measures of music to memory than it is for them to commit a whole page or even a whole, larger, piece of music to memory. Once the student commits a small chunk of music to memory they can begin enriching that section of music via visualization.

As previously mentioned visualization is the unseen world of piano practicing and is further more the cerebral process which commits our music to heart and embeds musical information (fingering, notes, chords, phrases) into our long-term memory. Visualization is great because we can do it virtually anywhere such as in the car or waiting in line, trying to go sleep, or even in our practice. A good way to visualize the music is to sit down with the music away from our instrument and try to recreate, in our mind's eye, what the specific notes look, feel, and sound like. This allows the pianist to hear their ideal sound world that they can search for when they sit down at the piano to practice. Visualization practice goes a long way to give a student confidence in their playing.

3.) Study music theory, learn your chords, and learn your scales

The student's vision of how to build their musician is, 95% of the time, short sighted. This is reflected in their practicing signified by the indulgence of running through pieces once or twice and calling it 'good', 'working' on passages that they are already sounding good at and hence don't need to be worked on, and lastly becoming frustrated with music that actually challenges them. Of course there is a balance of allowing a kid to be a kid and allowing them to have fun with music letting them know that “Hey! You are sounding awesome on this piece. You are really knocking it out of the park.” However if musicianship is to truly progress they must develop discipline and patience. These two traits, true music training will, without doubt, bring about in a student. They are what musicianship is founded on.

Discipline and patience are prerequisites for practicing of chords, scales, and the study of music theory. This is because most students see zero immediate reward from practicing chords and scales. They see no reason or use to them. Their vision is short sighted. Chords and scales are the building blocks of music and to understand music we must 100% understand chords and scales. There is no way around this and no substitute for them no matter how tempting it may be to fall for the “just play what you feel” attitude so prevalent in popular culture today. Composers use chords and scales to create mood and structure a story line the same way writers use letters and words to tell a story. Far too often students play through the music they are playing without the slightest regard for the chords that are happening. The reason is simple... they didn't put the time into learning their chords! Reading or playing music without understanding the chords is like reading a book on letter at a time. Put the time into learning both your scales and your chords. It will completely enrich your understanding of the music make learning music 75% easier.

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